Abstract [en]

The world's biodiversity is threatened and it is most likely because of anthropogenic impact. In a world where human exploits the earth's resources and thus make climate change and alterations to habitats. Mankind is dependent of a lot of ecosystem services such as pollination, but there's a difference in opinion how big of a dependency mankind have for biodiversity. Planetary Boundaries is a framework that derives from the needs of mankind and creates limitations on different earth-system processes. There are nine different Planetary Boundaries and biodiversity is one of them. The purpose of the study is to examine the Planetary Boundaries framework and to highlight critique, knowledge gaps and potentialities. The study also aims at doing an in depth research specifically regarding loss of biodiversity. In this study we attempt to find criticism, knowledge gaps and potentialities for Planetary Boundaries. This by conducting text analyses based on research that analyze the framework and through analyzing the framework ourselves. Based on the text analyses several themes have been identified.

Several conclusions could be drawn from the study. One of them illustrates the problem regarding the delimitations of the framework. Several of the analyzed articles also considered the large scale that the framework is based on complicates the use of the framework at a sub-global level. According to us, there is also an inconsistency about the framework's ability to apply at local and regional level and thus needs clarification. Since the framework is based on human perspectives social aspects should also be included. Finally, due to the complexity of the systems included in the framework it will probably never be able to present a complete picture of the earth systems.